Back in February, I mentioned that I have an addiction to slo-pitch. I played casually and horsed around in my early years, but really came to love the game later in life. Now I guess I'm trying to make up for lost time - Willie Stargell put it this way "I found myself in a race with Mother Nature to play as much baseball as I could before she forced me to stop". So I play almost 5 times a week on five different leagues - three are all women, one co-ed and one seniors league (one of only two women players - but we're working on that!)

Hard to pick a favourite league, but Friday nights could be the one - haven't played there the longest, but I've made some of the best friendships of my life... all women, all playing levels, all ages (well, over 25 at least) - nothing super competitive, but make no mistake that we all want to win our games! So I was honoured and humbled (and completely, gob-smackingly, shocked & surprised) when I was elected as a kind of 'Miss Congeniality' a couple of weekends ago at our annual, mid-summer tournament. Now I have to wear a crazy costume and behave myself at league functions (no getting silly over too many beers!) but I couldn't be prouder to be placed in the same company as some of the best women I've ever known. The story is a whole blog post in itself, so more on previous Miss M.I.S.T.s later.

Now to think of something good to contribute to the costume... every year since 2003 the current 'holder of the parasol' has added something to the ensemble - they'll need a steamer trunk to carry it around in another couple of years...

Drawn on black card stock - I can see how those paintings on black velvet that I used to be so enamoured with when I went to The Ex, would be fun to do... it hurts the brain a bit to figure out the lights before the shadows, but once you're in the groove of it, it seems to work out nicely.

I'm a bit of a wimp about colour, but went wild and added some orange, brown and green to the lit areas... I like the result, but feel I really need to stretch more.

Visited a long-time friend yesterday who has been painting and drawing consistently for over 40 years despite some very serious health challenges. Her work is imaginative, thoughtful, colourful, skillful and above-all completely authentic. She paints from her imagination using reference if she needs it and the results are stunning. I was fully humbled at what she's accomplished over the same time that I've been frittering away!

I've drawn this model several times - feels a bit like she has a 'muse' quality for me... but the reason I'm not really happy with this one is that if I have too much time, the drawing gets overworked and stiff - all the spontaneity that I love in quick sketches gets scribbled over and it begins to look cartoonish. Not my worst drawing, but not the best either.

Two and a half hours is too long for me to stick with the same drawing... my a.d.d. might be showing!

This was drawn weeks ago, but I'm just getting around to posting now... One of my favourite models but we haven't seen her for a while because she was recently married and her time has been spent doing newlywed stuff.

We seem to be kinda hard on models... Last night we had another fainting spell... Must be something in our atmosphere. Maybe we're too far north, or the elevation is too high. Good thing we have chairs!

Sketch on the left was about 5 mins. On the right, about 2.5 hrs

Last night's exercise... make something up in the background. Our model wore a kinda funky straw hat and half-sat/stood. I thought she looked like she was waiting for something - a train, or a plane... so I drew in the arched doorways. We ran out of time, but I might add some suitcases later, maybe a big trunk.

I think I need a vacation...

It's funny how things turn out. Last week our model started with a standing pose - back to most of the students. It was fine, but not exceptional or exciting... then about 10 minutes into the pose, she started to feel not so good... she warned us that she was stepping down for a break - no problem, but then she proceeded to fall into a faint. Thank goodness Neville was close by and caught her before she fell. We would have given up the night and let her go home, but she wanted to carry on - so we got her into as comfortable a pose as possible and she toughed it out for the remaining two hours - we watched her pretty carefully afterwards, but she did a great job - a tough cookie!

Drawn last week, but I've been buried in work for several weeks, so posting drawings has been relegated to backburner status. My 365-day experiment is going sadly awry and not finding time to draw every day is not good for my mood.

So, I will do my best to get caught up but not beat myself up too much about missing days...

What the heck - I can change it to 365 posts, not necessarily consecutive - so what if it takes until March 2016? Click here for Madeline...

No question that regular practice really helps, so last night I was fairly happy with the outcome... since the exercise was to build structure through straight lines and outlines... filling in only when you're pretty satisfied with the composition and proportions. Now, if I could build structure in my consistency and continue to draw regularly, maybe it won't always be so darn painful.

Sometimes the term baffles me, I mean who ever wants less chocolate, or green space, or especially time - but in this case it really worked. The exercise was to create a drawing using little or no lines - only tones. I struggled with it for about half an hour, then things started to work out. Lots of things I can improve on, but it was nice to see a result that helped me understand that a lot of extra detail can ruin a perfectly good sketch.